The proposed route led to a protest encampment by the Standing Rock Sioux and other activists.

The 1,172-mile pipeline is nearly complete except for a small section beneath a Missouri River reservoir near the encampment, which is about 50 miles south of Bismarck.

Archambault cheered the decision in a statement Sunday.

“I am thankful there were some leaders in the feral government that realized something was not right even though its legal,” he said. “For the first time in hisopry native American, they heard our voices. This is something that will go down in history and is a blessing for all indigenous people.

I heard the army corp of engineers will not grant the easement and they will reroute.

Doing some renovation on our house. There were relatively minor things wrong with it, with a couple of exceptions when we bought it, but it was a short sale so we got a very good deal on it.

Today, we’re moving a garage door opener from the big garage door to the small one. The opener on the big door is really undersized for the job, and even more so that the spring/counterbalance isn’t working. We’ll get that adjusted by a professional since everything we’ve read about adjusting or repairing it was essentially “YOU WILL DIE ARRRRRRRGH!” But in the meantime I can install the new, bigger one.
Fixed a couple of leaks, including a temporary repair until the spring, when we’ll pull the window in question and re-frame it. It wasn’t framed in properly and it’s 1/2 inch out of level/plumb, but for now it’s not leaking. It’s the window in the kitchen, so it puts off tiling the backsplash for now. I didn’t figure out that it was out of plumb until I started layout lines for the backsplash and found it. No way around it except to pull it and reframe it.
Getting ready to upgrade the main electrical panel and run some new circuits in the garage, basement, and the bonus room office. I can pull the wire and connect the outlets and even install breakers, but upgrading the panel itself needs doing by a professional for the same reason as above. My challenges are nothing like John’s, though.
Landscaping–talked to the county extension office because I want to get the right plants in the right places and save water, and there’s a study going to start in the spring of some native grass/hybrid plantings. I volunteered for that. We’ll see how that goes. We’re going to replace the water heater with a gas tankless heater next month, and we’re going to install solar panels on the roof as well. There are a LOT of Green contractors here. People are very serious about this kind of thing here in this red state and there are a lot of state laws that support green building and renovation here. It’s not like Oklahoma where the oil and gas interests run everything. Tourism is king here.
On the political side here in UT, this is what’s happening:
UT will NOT go for Clinton. It just isn’t going to happen. It MIGHT go to Evan McMullin (which would deny the EVs to Trump, which is almost as good) but I’m not holding my breath. Trump holds a steady 3-4pt lead over McMullin in the local polling, and local political reporters aren’t getting too excited. McMullin is pulling in the crowds, and he comes off as a clean-cut, reasonable person. That kind of thing is important here. The Mormons don’t like Trump, and McMullin is a nice alternative, but they REALLY dislike Clinton. If it wasn’t for the fact that every single member of the UT delegation is a Republican, McMullin would have a strong chance at a House or Senate seat if he were to run and maybe he’ll primary somebody in a couple of years. To get a feel for the Mormon mindset on politics, think of Mitt Romney. Handsome, articulate, not (overtly) a bomb-thrower, (appears) reasonable, etc.
The House campaigns are going about how one expects them. The UT3 has gotten particularly nasty but Mia Love will win. The Salt Lake Tribune “endorsed” her along the lines of “she’s useless and incompetent and probably corrupt, but the House is likely to stay Republican, so better to have an in with leadership than not.” In the UT2, where I live, the race is between the incumbent Republican who makes a huge deal out of having been a B-1 Pilot in the Air Force and strong national defense. The biggest single site employer in the district is the US Army, with Tooele Army Depot and Dougway Proving Ground. His opponent is a Social Worker and Community Organizer whose main campaign thrust is about doing things for the people of the district like homeless shelters and increased access to healthcare–things the incumbent has ignored. The Trib’s endorsement of the Republican incumbent in UT2 is essentially the same as the UT3 with the names changed.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00Soonergrunthttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgSoonergrunt2016-10-29 10:14:172016-10-29 10:18:07It's a beautiful day in Utah. Open Thread.

One of the major items that came out of last night’s Commander In Chief Town Hall on NBC/MSNBC was Donald Trump’s repeating his oft stated position that the US should have taken Iraq’s oil. I will leave the lively discussion of the logistics of this to others, and just briefly acknowledge that this would have been a war crime even for an officially UN recognized occupying power. What I really want to talk about about in regard to Iraqi oil is where Iraq’s oil is. Almost every map that I saw linked to, tweeted, posted, and/or referred to last night looked something like this:

Interestingly enough Judicial Watch FOIAed Vice President Cheney’s Energy Working Group back in 2002 and before Vice President Cheney shut the release of records off this was one of the items released. I first heard about this map in 2003 or 2004 when Greg Palast was interviewed by Keith Olbermann. Palast is a forensic accountant and had, himself, been looking into VP Cheney’s Energy Working Group. He came across the map as a result and eventually wrote the whole thing up as a chapter in his book Armed Madhouse.

Gulbenkian got 5% and the Seven Sisters Oil Company and their early controlling interests, which would eventually evolve into OPEC, got 95% of the rights to exploration. This was all part of something called the Red Line Agreement and Map divvying up the Middle East’s oil. Part of the little known history is that a decision was made, based on the exploratory blocks in Map 2, to keep Iraq’s oil in the ground. Palast details this history in his book, but the decision was made to treat Iraq like a strategic oil reserve.

When my teammates and I were getting ready to deploy to Iraq, but before we left training and attached to our Brigade Combat Team (BCT), we went through three different initial cultural preps of the operating environment. This was because they kept moving where they were sending the BCT (third time was the charm!). Initially we were going to Salah al Din Province, near some of the denoted oil fields in Map 1. And this is where I started paying attention to Map 2 as something other than a curiosity. One of my research managers had found an expatriate Iraqi, now a US citizen, with PhDs in agricultural and civil engineering who had worked for Saddam Hussein as the lead on various projects, including some dealing with the petroleum sector. He ran afoul of Saddam, was imprisoned, then Saddam – being capricious – changed his mind and rehabilitated him. Our source, smartly, made plans to flee as soon as he could. And he did so successfully. He graciously agreed to meet with the team so we could pick his brain. One of the questions we were able to ask was about Map 2. Was it legit? Was the bulk of Iraq’s oil really along the western border with Saudi Arabia? Was the history of Mr. Five Percent accurate? Things like that. Our source informed us the map was accurate, that the Iraqi Oil Ministry had always known that the bulk of their reserves were along the western border, and that was not where any of the actual exploitation of the resources were being done. He also confirmed that the decision to use Iraq’s oil as a strategic reserve from before it was an independent state (and before there was an OPEC) was also correct and that OPEC did, indeed, limit Iraq and Iran to not producing more oil than the other in any given year. This last requirement was supposed to tamp down the historic rivalry, but seems to have made it worse.

Why is any of this important? Quite simply its because the actual bulk of Iraq’s oil is in the western areas of Iraq. Specifically in Anbar Province. The Sunni tribes, who first fought us, then allied with us after the Sawha/Awakenings, control Anbar. The other western provinces of Iraq – Najaf and Muthanna are primarily Shi’a – including the holy sites and religious academy in Najaf. The people of these three provinces are sitting on a (black) gold mine. Given that there is virtually no active exploitation in the exploratory blocks along Iraq’s western border, taking Iraq’s oil isn’t just a matter of putting the entire operational US Army on the ground to protect the petroleum workers that are going to pump it out and then the oil’s transport out of Iraq. It would require building an entire new set of extraction infrastructure in a hostile environment – both physically and societally hostile to such efforts. And that is provided Map 2, after 100 years, is still accurately indicating where Iraq’s oil is. An additional concern is that a lot of Iraqi oil is not suitable for gasoline production as it is not light sweet crude. Rather it has large amounts of sulfur and other compounds in it that make it expensive to convert to anything but heating/fuel oil. This is largely what the refinery at Baiji is producing when its running.

On Friday, President Obama announced his administration’s decision to reject the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, after seven years of intense deliberation over the pipeline’s potential environmental risks. The announcement is widely viewed as a major victory for environmentalists and is sure to further burnish the president’s legacy in combating climate change…

… In reality, Obama and Kerry simply delivered the coup de grace to a long-wounded project. Yes, politics was part of it. But the effort to bring more oil from the Alberta tar sands wasn’t spiked because the method used to extract produces a lot of negative environmental effects—or, I should say, only because of that. Rather, the end of this effort to benefit from newish innovations in external fuel production (extracting liquid oil from gooey tar sands through the application of steams) comes as a result of some very different innovations in fuel production and consumption…Read more →

Notice of the long-expected veto was released without fanfare via a message to the Senate just hours after the bill formally arrived at the White House. The Senate has agreed to hold a vote on overriding the veto no later than March 3.

Obama has repeatedly said a State Department review of the TransCanada Corp. project — which would carry crude oil produced in Alberta, Canada, south through the U.S. — should proceed before a decision is made on whether to allow construction of the $8 billion pipeline…

… This is what happens when you have a Congress in which a rodeo clown like Jim Inhofe has power. This is said to have opened a new “era” in the current presidency. One hopes so. But, seriously, this doesn’t come anywhere close to killing the death-funnel. It just makes clear that the ongoing approval process will keep on keepin’ on, both at the State Department and in the state courts of Nebraska. It also reminds the Republicans in Congress that neither the world nor our form of government changed in November of 2014. Now we will also get to see how many, if any, Democratic congresscritters go over the side. Gut check time, boys and girls…

The 12-inch-diameter Poplar Pipeline spilled on Saturday morning. By Monday night, Glendive residents cleaned local grocery store shelves of bottled water as news spread that health officials had found benzene levels in the municipal water treatment plant at two to three times what the Center for Disease Control says is safe for long-term exposure.

Some elderly residents reported not having anything to drink to take medication. People who had drunk from their taps complained of stomachaches. Hospital and schools struggled to keep their charges hydrated and safe. Some businesses were forced to cut back services or close. People fled town to do laundry or take showers.

Not until Tuesday morning did the first pallets of clean, bottled water from Bridger Pipeline, owner of the Poplar Pipeline, arrive in Glendive. They were dispensed first to hospital, schools, nursing homes and the prison. Then they to went to other residents.

Bill Salvin, a spokesman hired by Bridger Pipeline who also fielded calls on Tuesday for the county government’s emergency services command center, said the delay was due to “a matter of logistics.”

I have family in Glendive, so I’ve visited there many times. The Yellowstone is the centerpiece of that town. It has no dams and is (was?) considered a “blue ribbon” trout stream. I wonder how many jobs will be lost when fisherman don’t come back this year.